


Bad Habits

by littlealex



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-04
Updated: 2008-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-12 07:13:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlealex/pseuds/littlealex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All the study habits Dean never knew Sam had begin to annoy him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Habits

If there was one thing in this world that Dean hated, it was research.

Well, there were other things. He mostly hated demons, but angry spirits were a pain in the ass, and he really, _really_ hated witches. But in the realm of the normal, Dean hated research. Just the thought of it was enough to make him shudder, his insides to turn over, and he was sure it once made him break out in hives. It had been a genius move to convince Sam to return to hunting, really, because if Dean was stuck doing all the leg-work himself, he would have crashed and burned long ago. He probably would have died of boredom, or from the smell of old books, or that disease you get when you're stuck inside all day and don't get any sun.

Sure, research was important, and Dean knew why it needed to be done. If you didn't know what you were getting into, you'd get yourself killed. Dean appreciated that. Didn't mean he needed to do it _himself_.

He pretended to, though. Sat there with a book in front of him, sometimes, but he usually took the computer because at least he could play solitaire in the boring parts. Sometimes he even read something, and he had to admit that it was a bit of a rush when he actually found something useful (almost always by accident), but that didn't mean he concentrated. Sam was the brainy one - always had been - and who was Dean to deprive him of the thrills of education? Really, it was good of Dean to let his younger brother do all the research. Sam could feel useful that way, feel like he was contributing to the hunt. Dean was such a good older brother sometimes.

It was fucking boring, though. Sitting there, pretending to read, staring at words on pages so hard he went cross-eyed. It left a lot of room for distraction, and somehow, quiet and studious Sammy was the biggest distraction in the world.

Well, not _him_ , exactly. It wasn't like he made strange noises, hummed to himself, tapped his fingers on the table - all things Sam told Dean off for doing during study time - in fact, he was silent. It was this... _thing_ he did with his fingers. His pen, to be more exact. Dean didn't know exactly how it worked, but the combination of Sam's fingers and a pen was just about the most distracting thing in the world. And it only happened during study time.

It had taken a while for Dean to notice it seriously. At first, it was just something weird and random Dean had seen Sam doing from across the room, something that made him do a double-take, but eventually he seemed to notice it happening every time Sam sat down with a pile of books and his notes.

Sam would settle into the seat, get into the groove, pen idle in his hand for a moment, and just about the same time Dean could see his brother's spine settle in for the long haul (which usually took anywhere from ten minutes to half an hour, depending on his level of emo that day), his fingers would move. It was a twitch, really, like a little spasm, and Sam would flip the pen a couple of times between his thumb and index finger, knocking it with the nail of his middle finger, until it came to rest. The respite was brief, however, and the pen was soon in motion again, spinning around once and then hurtling backwards until it was sitting just where it had started. Then, he would do it again, and again, and again, and there was no stopping, until Sam stopped reading. Sometimes Sam would drop the pen - it would miss its mark and clatter to the table top - but it never seemed to matter, or break his concentration.

To be quite frank, Dean found the whole thing a little disquieting.

It was like a ritual, something more than a habit, and it had come to be such a source of distraction that Dean found himself staring at his brother's fingers instead of the words, wondering what Sam was doing - how he was doing it, and why, and where he learned it. He harbored his curiosity quietly, not wanting to draw attention to it in case Sam decided he didn't like being watched in his private, thoughtful moments and stopped doing it altogether, but of course Dean being Dean couldn't hold onto it forever.

"Seriously, man. What the fuck are you doing?" He hadn't really meant for it to come out like that. In fact, he had always meant to plan it properly, whisk the pen away just as it was spinning around - backwards, because that was the part that intrigued him the most - look at the pen as though it was an instrument of great power that was exceeded only by its mystery and inquire, an eyebrow arched just so, as to what sort of attachment it was Sam had to the pen in question.

The reason it didn't happen that way was that Dean was a little bit tipsy. They'd been at some bar somewhere, taking a well-deserved night off, and he hadn't had that many but it was clear - after nearly shooting a bottle of tequila with rock salt instead of the spirit that had turned up - that he couldn't drive back to the motel. So, Sam had driven, and they were now scanning the local papers from the last week for any news about the bar. Dean was on the computer, which was usually better, but it was almost as though he could feel the way the pen moved through the air and it was so distracting he didn't last more than a minute before giving into his curiosity.

Sam, of course, looked a little confused. "What?" he asked, as though Dean had said something in another language, the pen mercifully still in his fingers once again.

"That thing... with the pen." Dean's words weren't quite as useful as he'd thought, and when Sam looked at his pen in case it was leaking ink over him, he shook his head and tried again, sitting up in his chair. "No, dude, the spinny thing you do."

Sam's forehead cleared, hairline going back where it belonged, and let out a breath that seemed both relieved and amused. "What, this?" he asked, spinning the pen, and Dean could swear Sam was just showing off now, the grin on his face threatening to break into a laugh.

"Yeah, the spinny thing," Dean said, as though his brother was the incredibly stupid one. Which, you know, he was most of the time. "What the fuck is it?"

Sam just shrugged. "Just something I learned in college. Helps me concentrate." The look on Dean's face must have echoed his thought process, because Sam's expression turned a little sour and he shifted in his seat. "Well, it's relaxing, you know. Repetitive movement, it's soothing. I can take my mind off my body and focus on what I'm reading."

That sounded like a bunch of New Age crap.

"It's not New Age crap, Dean, just Psych 101." Dean didn't think he had said it out loud, but it didn't really matter if he had or if Sam had read his mind, because now he was just being insulted by his petulant baby brother. "Like the way you have to have the right music when you're driving," Sam said hurriedly, as though Dean was about to punch him. "You know how you can't concentrate on the road if we're listening to my music? It's like that. If I had to keep still, I'd go insane, and messing with my pen isn't intrusive; it's subconscious, I don't need to think about it, so it lets me focus on what I want to do."

Okay, that sort of made sense. "Well, how the fuck do you do it? Where'd you learn it?"

"I learned it from a girl in my Art History class at Stanford." Dean smirked a particularly dirty smirk, and was surprised when Sam returned it (with his own watered-down version, of course). "It was an excuse to talk to her, but it's not exactly the best pick-up line. She taught me, though. It takes a lot of practice."

"I'll bet it does."

Sam rolled his eyes this time, but the shadow of his smirk still lingered around the corner of his mouth. "It's harder than it looks. You start out dropping it all the time, it's pretty discouraging. If you're bored, though, it doesn't really matter, and the tutes for that class were fucking mind-numbing." He shrugged and watched his own fingers as he spun the pen around a couple of times, back and forth. "Satisfied your curiosity?"

Dean scratched his jaw as he contemplated the question. He supposed that was all he had wanted to know. It had been the sort of thing that ate away at him, distracted him beyond reason, and he had enjoyed his own private curiosity about it (even though he thought that being so mesmerized by his brother's nimble fingers was a little sick), but somehow the mystery still didn't seem solved. Sam's answer that he did it to keep himself focused on the books didn't sit right with him, and now there was the added affair with the girl at Stanford... it was still an impenetrable fortress of mystery and intrigue.

"Yeah, I think so."

What? He had to keep his mind occupied somehow during study time.


End file.
